Cartoon Endorsement

Prepared by: Fariha Tazin, Lecturer, Faculty of Business Studies (Marketing) Proposed Title: CARTOON ENDORSEMENT: Efficacy on Kids Market Abstract: Kids are bombarded with various forms of promotional activities by marketers of food products. Today’s kids are very much aware of the fashion trend and who’s ever has taken them to market has been observed the marketing power of the popular cartoon characters. The purpose of this research study will be to find out whether cartoon strengthens children to buy more or not. Qualitative research approach will be used to carry out this research study.

This study will set out to find the amount of influence that cartoon endorsers have on children. As there have been few academic literatures on the topic of the effectiveness and usefulness of cartoon endorsement in the field of advertising, It has been set as the main goal of this research studies to explore the weight of cartoon endorsement as a promotional technique in Bangladeshi markets. 1. Introduction: A child wakes up in his Disney character pajamas, rolls out of his Barney sheets, his toothbrush, toothpaste and perhaps even his soap covered in cute licensed characters.

Gathering up his Pokemon cards and strapping on his Doraemon backpack, he heads off to school. But the Commercialism does not stop even in the schoolyard. Leveraging the endorsement of products by popular cartoons, as a marketing practice, is a common phenomenon. Cartoon endorsement concept has been derived from the idea of celebrity endorsement. The retailing segment is displaying immense business potential for these younger segments. Retailing for kids, be it branded or unbranded, has emerged as a tremendous market in Bangladesh.

The kids retail market is immense, with a huge variety available in the clothing, accessories and footwear sections. Some of the products that are available in the kid’s accessories segment include fashion accessories, watches and even kids’ designer jewellery, not to mention toys, books, games, electronics, education aids. Dora the Explorer, Mickey Mouse and all the other staples of morning TV are part of the world’s greatest sales team — because when they’re on the package, kids start yelling for it. 2. Aim: to examine the effect of Cartoon endorsement on kids market. . Objective: a. To find out that whether there is a relationship between cartoon endorsement and the buying behavior of children. b. To analyze the benefits of having cartoon endorsement on products. 4. Research Questions: a. How retailers use cartoons on their variety of products? b. How kids respond to these endorsed products? c. How unbranded products are having benefited from this Cartoon endorsement of children market? d. Is there any negative outcome of this marketing that can badly affect children? 5. Literature Review:

Advertisers often choose celebrities who are physically attractive allowing them to get benefit both from the status and physical appeal of different celebrities (Singer 1983). Most of the advertisements which get on air contain characters that are attractive. It has been observed that consumers often form positive opinions about such characters. Apart from this, it is seen that attractive communicators are doing well in changing the beliefs of the consumers (Baker and Churchill 1977; Chaiken 1979; Debevec and Kernan 1984) and increasing the purchase intents (Friedman et aI. 976; Petroshius and Crocker 1989; Petty and Cacioppo 1980) as compared to those characters that are unattractive. In one of the study by Story and French revealed that 75% of the purchase requests take place in a supermarket environment. 6. Methodology: The data will be collected using the questionnaires. For this purpose different school, neighborhoods and shopping malls will be visited to collect the data. This research will be conducted by taking the perspective of the parent’s that how they their children behaves when they encounter the cartoon endorsed product.

The sample size for carrying out this research consisted of 50 respondents. 6. 1 Data Collection a) Primary Data Collection In this research study the primary data will be collected through survey questionnaires. For this purpose questionnaires will be distributed to those parents whose children lies between the ages of 3 to 8 years. So it is possible to define that age group of children who are dependent on their parents for buying decisions. b) Secondary Data Collection Secondary data will help us in determining the various dimensions of the variables under study.

The secondary data for this research study will be collected from different journals, books, researches and websites. Mostly the data will be collected from previously published journals and researches. 7. Conclusion Young children, in particular, have difficulty in distinguishing between advertising and reality in ads, and ads can distort their view of the world. Additionally children are unable to evaluate advertising claims. Children represent an important demographic to marketers because they have their own purchasing power, they influence their parents’ buying decisions and they’re the adult consumers of the future.

Marketer tries to draw children’s attention through various means like TV, Magazines, Stickers, etc. Obviously attracted children by the marketing practices; get adversely affected most of the time. I expect this research to contribute to debates of the idea will be to find out the relationship between the cartoon endorsement and children impulse buying behavior, more specifically that whether those products are bought more impulsively by the children which have their favorite cartoon characters on them.

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